China: The Risks of a Hard Landing Are Growing

While the market has swung between optimism and fear, rallies and selloffs, in this insane week, there has been one constant beneath it all: A growing worry about what’s going on in China.

Bear markets in copper and the Shanghai Composite index are signs that all is not well in China, which has basically been assigned the role of global safety net, expected to bail out European sovereigns and to keep buying US Treasurys to keep interest rates here low.

But China might need to save some of its cash for rescuing itself.

Even the global economists at Barclays, which have been a pretty consistently bullish lot for much of the past two years, are starting to sound a bit anxious about the situation in China and its vulnerability to weakness in Europe and the US.